Hacktivist 'Hardcore Charlie' claims China military hack

Anonymous-affiliated hacker exposes alleged US army docs

A hacker affiliated to hacktivist group Anonymous and dubbed Hardcore Charlie claims to have broken into the IT systems of a Chinese military contractor and exposed documents related to the US war effort in Afghanistan.

The hacker first announced the news on Monday via this tweet: “CHINA military contractor CEIEC owneed like hell ! US military escort charts exposed to Taliban.”

The accompanying post to Pastebin contains links to supposedly sensitive documents uploaded to Photobucket and a large data dump of other files, along with the following message:

Today us prezenta recently owneed chino military kontraktor CEIEC. Us be shoked porque their shiiit was packed with goodiez cummin from a USA Military brigadezz in Afghanistan, them lulz hablando mucho puneta about sam slit eyed dudz in Vietnam and Philiez doing bizness in Ukraine and Russia selling goodiez to Taliban terrorists.

In an email conversation with Reuters, Charlie reportedly described himself as a 40-year-old Hispanic man who lives near the US. He was a friend of LulzSec informant Sabu and managed to hack the CEIC, or China National Import & Export Corp, by cracking key email passwords.

The newswire raised doubts about the authenticity of the documents, however, given that Charlie is also associated with a hacker known on Twitter as YamaTough.

The claimed hack of CEIEC - which sells electronic warfare, radar and logistics technology amongst other things – comes in the same week that Anonymous finally turned its attention to China.

The group claimed to have hacked and defaced over 480 regional government and business sites as part of a new campaign designed to encourage hackers in the country to rise up against the Communist Party.

Ironically enough, Chinese hacktivists are much more likely to use their skills against the West with, it has long been suspected, the help or blessing of the authorities. ®